Money and Who Makes It Is ...

By Mark Hall

August 15, 2005 12:00 PM ET

Recommended

(3)

Digg

Twitter

Share/Email

Computerworld - ... a sensitive issue in the open-source community. According to Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation in Mountain View, Calif., "Anytime money gets into the picture, people get suspicious." Baker was explaining to an audience of open-source
developers at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Ore., earlier this month why she feels her nonprofit organization needs a for-profit sister company to promote and manage the world's No. 2 Internet browser, Firefox.
The money problem inside the open-source world stems from the fact that most developers who contribute to open-source projects do so for free, while some individuals build successful companies around those projects and profit from them. Paul Everitt, executive director of the Plone Foundation in Houston, which promotes the Plone open-source content management software, says, "If you want to attract developers, you can't give off the smell that someone's going to make a lot of money" while leaving the developers in the cold.


Winston Damarillo, CEO of Simula Labs LLC

Mike Shaver, the Mozilla Foundation's technology strategist, says those views helped shape the structure of the new Mozilla Corp. so it would own no assets and, despite its for-profit status, would be unlikely to earn a dime. "Everything we do is for the [Mozilla] community," he says.
Winston Damarillo, CEO of Simula Labs LLC, a venture capital business that nurtures open-source companies, acknowledges that there's "a little bit" of resentment among some open-source programmers. Damarillo, who recently sold open-source application server firm Gluecode Software Inc. in El Segundo, Calif., to IBM , proudly says, "We produced a few open-source millionaires." But he stresses that his goal is to offer the "inner core [of developers] of an open-source project to be co-founders" of the companies that Simula Labs will launch.


	Zach Urlocker, vice president of marketing at MySQL Inc.

Zach Urlocker, vice president of marketing at the leading open-source database company, MySQL Inc. in Cupertino, Calif., claims that open-source developers "are less extremist today." Still, he says it is essential for MySQL "to err on the side of overcommunicating" the company's goals to developers to deflect any resentment that the company makes money. In addition, says CEO Marten Mickos, MySQL pays for key pieces of code developed by contributors to its database.
Damarillo argues that people in the open-source community have much to offer the IT industry. "The biggest loss for open-source is if developers become salaried employees instead of entrepreneurs," he says.
Open-source code can pose legal ...
... headaches for IT departments if they don't carefully manage the Byzantine licensing requirements.

Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Jump to comments

Development

Additional Resources

WHITE PAPER

Do You Know the 7 Steps to Successful Data Migration?

Approximately 60 percent of data migration projects overrun time or budget, while some fail completely. Download this white paper, "Enhancing Your Chance for Successful Data Migration," to learn the critical steps you need to take to execute a data migration project with minimum cost and risk to your business.

WHITE PAPER

Total Cost of Ownership of Server Computing Vs. PCs

Read the Gartner research note to learn why the TCO of a server-based computing deployment used to deliver all applications to users is around 50% lower than that of an unmanaged desktop deployment.

WHITE PAPER

IDC White Paper: Linux in a Global Recession

Economic downturns have a tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions, and punish solutions that are not cost competitive or that are out of synch with industry trends. This IDC White Paper presents the results of an IDC survey of 330 companies in Western Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas that measures the receptiveness to Linux and takes into consideration changing views driven by the disruptive economic environment that businesses face today.

White Papers & Webcasts

Informatica 9 Launch: Transform your Business. Transform your world.

LIVE Nov 10, 2009 12:00 PM ET

Architecting Business Intelligence Applications for Change: The Open Solution

LIVE Nov 12, 2009 02:00 PM ET

The State of PCI DSS Compliance at Organizations Today
Download this resource today!

Managing Secure File Transfer to Save Time, Money and IT Resources
Learn how companies are using innovative technology to overcome these challenges and improve user productivity by offloading e-mail attachments and replacing FTP with...

Can Heuristic Technology Help Your Company Fight Viruses?
What is Heuristic Technology and how can it help safeguard your business against viruses? Learn more.

Security Convergence Equals Network Security Cost Savings
Listen to IBM Internet Security Systems' take on network security convergence.

Why Email Must Operate 24/7 and How to Make This Happen
Learn how to avoid an email outage by implementing a hosted email continuity solution.

Lower the Cost and Complexity of a Mobile Workforce through Automation
Download This Resource Now!

Eradicate Spam & Gain 100% Asurance of Clean Mailboxes
Get this paper now!

Managing Mobility: Improve Data Security, Compliance and Manageability
Download This Resource Now!

Mastering eDiscovery: The IT Manager's Guide to Preservation, Protection & Production
Get this paper now!

Disaster Recovery 2008: Reduced Costs and Improved Performance
How long can your Enterprise afford to be without your data? With an accelerated disaster recovery program, you never have to answer this...

All White Papers | All Webcasts